European Championship: On Disputed Territory

The 17th individual European Championship began in Gjakova in the disputed republic of Kosovo on Thursday. For the second year running the top seed is David Navara; is being challenged by Radoslaw Wojtaszek, Nikita Vitiugov, Ruslan Ponomariov, defending champion Evgeniy Najer, and over 200 other players.

This is the first time that the European Chess Championship has been held in a state that is not recognized by some countries. While we don’t know whether there are players who privately refused to participate based on their own political views it is clear that one of the countries that has refused to recognize Kosovo, Azerbaijan, has recommended its citizens not to play chess there. No other country appears to have made such a recommendation, at least among the strong chess playing nations.

The strongest participant from each of the 15 countries with the highest ranked players is included in the list below – the text in brackets indicates whether their own state recognizes Kosovo.

The official website of the European Team Championship which will be held from October 7-18 in Warsaw, Poland published the composition of the participating teams. Russia will be represented by GMs Alexander Grischuk, Peter Svidler, Alexander Morozevich, Evgeny Tomashevsky, Dmitry Andreikin. The second-ranked team is Armenia which is traditionally headed by Levon Aronian.

The website osetiasportivnaya.ru publsihed the list of top-30 rapid players. Let us remind you that such ratings were officially introduced a year ago, however, FIDE still hasn't made a rapid rating list yet.

Ashot Vardapetyan, Deputy Chief Arbiter at the European Club Cup in Eilat and the Vice-President of the Armenian Chess Federation, gave an interview to the website extratime.az addressing kind words to the Azerbaijani Chess Federation (ACF). The topic was raised in connection to the Olympiad-2016 which will take place in Baku.

The traditional tournament named after Anatoly Karpov will take place from September 27th to October 8th in Poikovsky. The strongest will be determined among ten GMs in a round-robin: Alexander Motylev, Sergei Rublevsky, Dmitry Jakovenko (all Russia), Ruslan Ponomariov (Ukraine), Alexander Onischuk (USA), Viorel Bologan (Moldova), Lazaro Bruzon (Cuba), Radoslaw Wojtaszek (Poland), Nigel Short (England) and Wang Yue (China).

Two participants of the European Individual Chess Championship Baadur Jobava and David Lomsadze appeared to the last round game in an intoxicated state, moreover, Lomsadze looked battered and his face was covered in blood. The organizers of the tournament called for the police and ambulance for them.